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big custom project.... when to ask for money?

I am in talks right now to start a development project with a company. This project would be web based and is has special feature that are unique to the company. This project will take me over a month of work.

So one of my concerns is how to handle this financially? If I do +1 month worth (over 100 hour) of work on the project and they change their minds for whatever reason Iíve lost out on a very large amount of time. As this is a relatively unique project its not like I can just turn around and re-sale the code/software.

How should I handle this? I want to remain professional, but at the same time protect myself. Asking for some money up front or in the middle of the project seems odd.

Ultimately it's whatever you can get them to agree to, try to set up a series of deliverables, with some percentage of the money due for each one before they get the next. It might be (just making up numbers) 15% for initial wireframes and specifications (to show they'll pay *something*), 45% for the acceptance test version, and 40% for the production delivery. (Again, just making up numbers and arbitrary breakdowns -- you should have a better idea of how you want to separate it into deliverables).

"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
~ Terry Pratchett in Nation